


of a feather

by reggievass



Category: Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente
Genre: AU, Americana, F/M, Southern Gothic, deep south
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 02:17:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/425795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reggievass/pseuds/reggievass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marya lies down on the ground in the middle of a shorn field, tobacco stalks poking her back, late tobacco worms creeping by green, but too slow to get a bite.<br/>She lies down and doesn’t move until the birds begin to circle, the vultures, the buzzards, the scavengers like she.<br/>For Marya saw the secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of a feather

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt on sister-wife's americana meme on livejournal:  
> deathless, marya morevna;  
> the pews are all full of fine fellows  
> and the hawker has set up her shop  
> as they’re turning them off at the gallows  
> she’ll be selling right under the drop, boys

Marya lies down on the ground in the middle of a shorn field, tobacco stalks poking her back, late tobacco worms creeping by green, but too slow to get a bite.

She lies down and doesn’t move until the birds begin to circle, the vultures, the buzzards, the scavengers like she.

For Marya saw the secret.

She saw nature’s clean bare ankles, not dirty like her own.

She hid in the shadows of the cinderblock home her father built between hours at the mill and watched the vultures drop down from their perch, turn into men and marry her sisters.

She sleeps her night in a room once shared, now barren. Her family, her home is too young in this land to hold spirits, to hold elves, to hold domoviye.

Even their ghosts abandon this house for a shadowsilver land.

She saw nature’s clean ankles, washed whiter than hers will ever be from shared bathwater on a Saturday night.

She knows the hunger of twice-boiled fatback soup, knows the itch of grey flour sack clothes and knows the way her hair stays in a braid by merit of its wave because there’s no money for ribbon.

Marya knows all this, she saw all that, and she wants an escape.

She lies flat on her back amongst the sticky stalks, the horseflies and the tobacco worms setting a trap for the scavengers that circle.

Surely as she saw birds’ claws become uncallused feet, she saw men hanging in the trees at dusk with no chance of flight, she saw the burning crosses, and she saw the tears that will not be her own.

She decided years ago to bind her heart to a fowl scavenger because she will suffer anything to stave off death.

It is hot like the barns they use to cure the leaves, but her mother has shot the last snake, Marya has bound the last bushel, her father has gone into town to sell off the final crop.

She lies in her white shift made of bleached flour sacks and feels puffed up like raw, wet cotton until the birds begin to circle.

Only one drops down.

He bares the mark of Cain, and she will step into sin like Eve, like Jezebel, like Delilah if it keeps her heart in her chest, if it keeps her feet on the ground.

Everyone knows Cain’s a killer, but they also know the greater sin is the sin of killing Cain.

“I am Koschei,” he says.

The name does not matter for drums beat in his soul and echo in her heart.

She does not bother to invite him inside the cinderblock house even now filling with cousins for another wake.

She takes him there on dry ground – or lets him take her.

It is hard to tell the difference.

It does not matter if he takes her as his wife, because she was always already a soldier in his war against brother Death.

She was always lying in this field.

He was always flying over her.

Their falling into each other was always like hanging from a too short rope, just that slow.


End file.
